After coming to the brink of a shutdown when grant monies were dramatically reduced, the Free Music Archive announced that it will live on under the ownership of camera rental company KitSplit. A few weeks ago my Radio Survivor colleague Erick Klein talked at length with FMA Director Cheyenne Hohman, who explained why the project was on the verge of shutting down, though leaving the door open to a possible recovery.
Although the FMA was originally conceived by founding community radio station WFMU as as a repository of music free from performance royalties for non-commercial radio stations to play online, it also became a place for independent film- and video-makers to find music for their productions, available for free or at low-cost. The KitSplit acquisition reflects that constituency, since the company supports independent creators in a variety of ways.
As it turns out, non-commercial radio stations were able to negotiate reasonable rates to play commercial music on their online streams, making the FMA less of an outright necessity. Yet, it still developed into a immense catalog of curated sounds that attracted an enormous community of listeners and creators. The irony is that its popularity only increased costs to host all these files.
As a for-profit company one assumes that KitSplit is in a better position to keep the FMA funded. While some from the community radio world might be suspicious of a for-profit taking over the archive, on the FMA blog Cheyenne assures that, “though KitSplit is a for-profit business, the FMA will remain true to its mission of sharing free, curated audio to all.” She also points out KitSplit’s efforts to support women in filmmaking.
On its own blog, KitSplit says, “FMA will stay up and running as is, and together we’ll be able to serve creators and our community even more powerfully.”
Though FMA listening and downloads have remained online while its future was being sorted out, artists have not been able to contribute new tracks for about a month. Fresh uploads should resume in a few weeks.
The scare that the FMA might go away (though with the current library backed up at the Internet Archive) serves a reminder to me that vital independent projects like this need our continuing support. It’s easy to become complacent and think that grant funding or others will keep them afloat. Yet, they’re often more secure and health when a multitude of small funders contribute rather than when relying upon a small number of large funders.
That’s why community radio fund drives are a necessary, thought sometimes annoying thing – the loss of a few individual donors can be made up by new ones, who might be brand new listeners. The loss of a multi-thousand dollar grantor is much harder to recover from.
So support your favorite independent non-profit, low-profit and what-profit? enterprises while they’re still here.
